Category: Uncategorized

I’m looking forward to Thursday night’s RSS Industry Night Roundtable II, hosted by Pheedo during Ad:Tech this coming week. Thanks to Bill Flitter for the invitation.

Alistair MacLean claimed a few more hours of my life earlier this week, with Force 10 from Navarone.

The Guns of Navarone (1957) grabbed enough attention (and money) that MacLean must have felt obligated to create this sequel. The story in Force 10 (1968) starts only hours after the end of Guns. The lead characters are rushed off to solve a new war-turning problem, this time in Yugoslavia, saving a Partisan force from the Germans (this is all World War II action). Nobody stops for thought… action, action, action.

The only jarring note? The leader of the English force is supposed to be a world-renowned mountaineer (critical skills in both Navarone novels), but in Force 10 he has to act as a double-agent, as if no one would recognize him. But the tale rushes on, so just keep moving…it’s better that way.

Thanks to the very helpful geekgrrl on the WordPress.org support forums, clock is ticking once more, after being broken for a bit. All posts have their content once more.

I noted the problem this morning with this note “Post content and comments not rendering (WP 1.5.2)” and a similar post “All copy in posts has disappeared had the solution.

Deactivating the Markdown plugin, which is one of the default set in WordPress, fixed the problem immediately: all content reappeared. I’m still running v1.5.2 of WordPress. I have no idea if this affects other versions and combinations.

I don’t believe I ever activated the plugin, though it’s possible it was on by default. I’m curious whether Simon Waldman‘s experience was triggered by # of posts or is all of this somehow strangely tied to the date?

I’m going to reach out to the developer of the plugin, Michel Fortin. No blame, but maybe he can take a look at his code if similar reports confirm the cause.

Somehow, I broke my blog. All that shows up now are the headlines, categories, and timestamps. The content is still there in the database when I go to edit, but not rendering. I haven’t changed anything that I know of, but it is suspicious (maybe?) that post 1000 was the last one live. I’m making this post in a (futile?) attempt to see if post 1001 might help, while I also look directly at the database (not my expertise) and other search support forums.

When you can read this, all will be well again. How’s that for a Catch-22?

Update: working again. See next post for details.

Michael Moore was born to make Fahrenheit 9-11. Love him or hate him, you know what you’re going to get with a Moore movie: full-bore agitprop. Metacritic score of 67, which is probably higher than I would have given.

GETTING THERE The science of driving directions by Nick Paumgarten earned an immediate printing, because (a) it’s 10 pages long in the printer-friendly version and I can’t sit in this chair and stare at this screen any longer and (b) it’s about maps and (c) it’s The New Yorker, whose deep dives are always worth a read if you enjoy the subject.

All this before I read the article. Good night!

UPDATE: Worth the paper, although a bit too circular to feel like John McPhee, who might have taken up such a topic in these pages in the past.

A return to Alistair MacLean snacking, with When Eight Bells Toll, set on the western coast of Scotland. Crisp enough, if not surprising.

I wonder if the movie is worth seeing, if only for a young Anthony Hopkins? Book was written in 1966, and the movie was released in 1971, when Hopkins was only 34. No matter what else I see him in, I can only think of Hannibal.

Read Wilbur Smith for historical action set in Africa, usually with a strong dose of Empire. But don’t expect anything filling, or you’ll be disappointed. The man has written 30 “Epic African Adventures” according to his website. I’ve read several in the past, but hard to remember which, given the titles and subject matter. The Triumph of the Sun was an airport pickup. First two-thirds lived up to my expectations, but the last third dwindled.

Stick with the Courtney novels if you want to start somewhere with Smith.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan felt right in line with Lethem, but with more of a William Gibson flavor. The language didn’t thrum like Gibson’s, but the world-framing theme of ‘sleeves’ (human bodies as replaceable wrappers for your ‘core,’ or brain in a digital form) read well, and even original when taken to its extremes. The mechanics of sleeving even drive the plot in several ways.

I’ll pick up Broken Angels and Woken Furies, two novels set in the same context, at some point. Probably my next airport bookstore trip, since that’s when I picked up Altered Carbon.

I welcome the United States media near-blindness to European soccer, as it lets me enjoy English Premier League games on my TiVo. I have little need to watch the games live, even were that possible, because as long as I avoid using the world in world wide web, it’s child’s play to avoid getting scores from my other media outlets (print, television, radio).

This summer, a new women’s league here in the US will start play, and all their games will be broadcast only online. The New Jersey Wildcats are ducking the endless struggles of the WUSA (now defunct) in finding television coverage, and going straight online.

From Shelly Palmer in MediaPost (registration required, April 6, 2006 article):

This summer every Wildcats game will be available on demand by anyone in the world who has a broadband connection by simply going to www.NJWildcats.com or Google Video. Within hours of the game finishing, a 35-minute version complete with pre-game show, first half highlights, halftime show, second half highlights, and post-game recap will be viewable and downloadable to iPods by Wildcats fans from all over the world.

Each game will have ten 30-second commercials and will be totally free to the end user. In past years the team attracted only local sponsors and advertisers but this year, by distributing games over IP Video, they will reach further. “National brands had no interest in even talking to us, let alone spending money,” Wildcats co-owner Pat Ruta says. “Today the team is sponsored by Nike and is in discussions with Coke, Lowe’s, Anheuser Busch, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Subway, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merrill Lynch, Horizon Blue Cross & Blue Shield, Canon, and many more.”

No sense of who they are playing, but in a world where the NFL Network, MLB.com, and NBA.com are challenging their broadcast partners, I’ll be curious to see if this pipsqueak in the sporting world can demonstrate enough success for the coverage to spread from online to broadcast.

That media jump may not be required for the success of the venture, but it would be a public statement, and a more compelling analog to what VH-1 has done with iFilm.com in creating Web Junk. Note… you know you’re a geek when your friends have forwarded you many of the items which later appear on Web Junk.